Lent, Day 40

Lent: The Divine Feminine, Day 40
For the final post of this series, I wanted to shared the beautiful words of my friend Kaitlyn Hamby.

A Letter to my Christian Sisters who have been Sexually Assaulted

My sisters, you are divine. You are a physical celestial being. You’ve experienced the ugliest that the earth has to offer. You may feel broken. You may feel dirty. But your beauty has not dulled. You are valid. You are no less divine, sweet one.

Your anger is justified. Your anger is holy. Your urge for justice, redemption and acknowledgement is set apart. A godly mandate for men to treat you with the utmost dignity, respect and love has been broken against you. You have every right to be burn with rage.

Do not be afraid. Take heart. This world still has beauty. There is still safety. There is still reason to live. It is hard to access at times, but that is okay, because the divine never leaves you. How can one separate oneself from one’s own essence? There is nothing you can do or can be done to you to separate you from your divinity.

There is no responsibility on you to say or act any way to demand respect, justice or redemption. Jesus will do that for you. He has done it for you. He is doing it right now. He sees our wounds, our scars. He doesn’t just soothe us, he heals us. Healing does not mean that your abuser gets off scot free. It does not mean that those who blamed you for this forced trauma are justified. It does not mean that this experience no longer affects you. Healing means freedom. Jesus is synonymous with liberty. Uninhibited joy and liberation is within reach. You don’t have to cut yourself off from freedom in exchange for the search for justice. You can have both. Jesus will do that for you.

The church must do more to embrace victims. They need to address the deep seeded, violent patriarchy that runs rampant and leads to many women’s trauma. It is their divine obligation to care for God’s beloved and to fight for justice alongside Jesus. As half of the church and as Jesus’ beloved, we should not have to fight to be seen. Jesus embraces us through our grief and our trauma. The body of Christ should too.

Our Father and Mother who art in Heaven, earth and within me, you are holy. May your perfect love and justice come. May your hope for humanity’s unity and peace flourish on Earth as it does in heaven. Sustain us through this day. Forgive us for cutting ourselves off from liberation, and help us to forgive those that block us from it. Lead us not into the temptation that parallels pain, but deliver us from despair. For the unity, the love and the beauty are yours now and forever.

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What does it mean to be a woman? Well, it means overcoming all odds. It means standing strong in your convictions. It means seeing beauty and grace and the image of God in yourself and in those around you. You feel the whole spectrum of emotions. You share your heaven sent joy, and sometimes your sadness, and you protect others in their sadness. It means to be mad as hell at injustice and unfairness, and pushing back with all powerful love. You are the divine and the divine is in you. To be a woman is to be divine.